Recent blog tagging “affair” within Oracle community, that started a week (or two ago) looked like an “innocent” fun for some part of Oracle blog community, caused not only a havoc in news aggregators (most notably OraNA, but also ended in Howard J. Rogers decision, to remove all the content from his site. Howard has been my favorite Oracle blogger for a long time, his excellent articles were a great contribution to community and will be missed as much as his writing style of his blogs. I’m totally on Howard side. I admit that I do not use any of the Oracle news aggregator sites, so in this case I’m only affected indirectly, nevertheless I understand the problem and agree with HJR standings expressed on comp.databases.oracle.server. I’m strongly against any chain-letter activity, pyramid systems and similar stupidity coming either from third parties or from inside community.
I hope this madness surrounding blog tagging will soon end and that (hopefully) HJR will reconsider his (legitimate) decision and open the site for the public.

To continue in the spirit of my last blog entry, I thought it might be interesting to share with you the list of my favorite free software that I’m using. I’m using some of the listed tools on a daily basis (some of them even right now, while writing this blog entry!), others less often but when I need them, they’re nevertheless essential for me. I would also like to emphasize on word free – I don’t want to exclude free, but at the same time closed source software from the list. I’m not OSS purist, I’m well aware of the legal as well as business constraints in some cases, due to which, original authors decided to give us free software without giving away source code. When I’m looking for a tool, I always prefer an open source program over a closed source one. Only when I can’t find good open source application (usually under GPL license) I settle for closed one.

So, here is the List of my favorite free software. It’s not a final compilation of my free software tools by any means – rather than trying to write it down in one hop, I’ll add categories and items as time goes by.

Last but not least, a fair warning:

• I’m not the person to contact if you have question about particular tool,
• don’t expect from me to help you install particular tool or give you an advice on how to use it,
• if you think you know a better tool for the particular task, you can let me know and if I found it good, I’ll include the item on the list with appropriate credit.

I just read an interesting Interview with Eric S. Raymond in January 2008 issue of Linux Journal. I liked his view on the reasons for Microsoft (obvious) fiasco with Vista (imho, we could say the same for MS Office 2007 as well), a quote from the interview:

‘Here’s an example of the sort of thing I mean: the Vista flop. Completely predictable, didn’t surprise me for a nanosecond, and not because I think Microsoft is staffed by incompetents either. It’s not; it hires some of the brightest programmers in the world. But, as I’ve been explaining for ten years, there’s a scale regime above which closed-source development is unsustainable as the ratio between productive work and complexity-management overhead rises. Microsoft was bound to reach it; the only question was when.

and later on, he continues:

The only thing I’m sure of is that Microsoft’s days of being able to ship competitive software from closed source are numbered, let alone its days of maintaining monopoly lock-in. The Vista stall-out, and the scaling phenomena beneath it, guarantee that.

How true! I remember a vivid debate, a couple of years ago, with my friend in the local pub (yes, usual geek talk after a couple of beers;-). He argued against my opinion that this decade will not be remembered by Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs and the likes – I firmly believe that this decade will be remembered by free Open Source Software and the foundation that is based on OSS – just think about it; I’m sure Google could not succeed without OSS — can you imagine using something like MSN with Microsoft Passport, instead of Google? Or some locked-in service from Apple, hidden behind the pretty (userinter)face and accessible from (Apple only) approved gadget? I don’t think so.

On one side we have proprietary silos from major software players with Microsoft standing on the top of the hill, others are trying to climb over each other to the top of this hill as well, lurking us to abandon Microsoft silos and move to their proprietary realm. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against a fairly priced software at all – as long as it doesn’t lock my data in any proprietary format and/or as long I have a choice to pick a (better) product from a competitor – I’m happy as long as I have a choice and a fair price!

In my opinion this decade will be remembered the most by alternatives that Open Source software movement brought to the table.

I’ll remember 80’s as the period of micro computers (Commodore, ZX Spectrum , Atari, Amiga…) that changed the way we work (and play:). Cheap micro computers allowed masses to get in touch with computing for the first time. The next rising celebrity of 80’s was a “dull” PC.

I’ll remember 90’s as the period, when we all helped to build Bill’s Kingdom. We were all busy building our local area networks and connecting the local area networks to the Net – a holy grail of computing, so far. Back then, the growth of the Net surprised most, if not all big IT players, including such “luminaries” as Bill & Steve. On the other hand, it was the growth of the Net, that allowed truly global, community based software development, something unthinkable a decade before. Still, in the 90’s most of the old-style, closed source companies were in a denial phase — in a line: “…no way OSS can compete with our pricey shinny products, … , and what about the “enteprise level” support, bla, bla, bla….“. What a mistake?

I’ll remember 00’s (did I write this correctly?;-) as the decade when we get back some control of the software that we’ll use. We got back a choice. I’m not using OSS (and free non-OSS software as well) because it’s free, I’m using it, when it’s better than proprietary one! Being free is only a minor bonus.

Presentation material from SIOUG 2007 is available in pdf format – or better said, only part of it. I’m a bit disappointed, that three weeks after the conference, I could not refer to a single paper from my favorite guest speakers: James Morle, Cary Millsap, Julian Dyke and Wolfgang Breitling, nor papers from Jože Senegačnik. I hope SIOUG site will be updated with the missing material soon.
In general, I think SIOUG 2007 conference was a success. The Wednesday alone was worth the conference fee (if you ever had a chance to listen to Cary Millsap, then you know what I’m talking about – not that other speakers were bad, it’s just that the Cary presentation style and skills are in it’s own class).
Did I dislike something about SIOUG 2007 conference (apart from missing presentation material)?
You bet (after all, I have to take care about my grumpy-ego trip-attitude;-) :

• a lack of discipline from the speakers to finish with the presentation on time, which resulted in cascading time conflicts with presentations done in other tracks. The guest speakers showed better sense for the time.
• the most boring stuff on conference were “self-promoting” presentations done by conference sponsors. Some of them were so boring that not even a double Turkish coffee could keep me awake. One of the CEO was so eager and so ridiculous in his bragging at the same time, that the audience start laughing at some point – he thought we’re laughing at his gag – so he bragged a bit more …. do you sense Catch 22 here ;-)
• official conference photographer was a real pain in the ass, someone should took those damn batteries from him, or tell him that one or two photos per session are enough, not 10-15 from five different angles. Give us a break, this is a technical conference not some fashion show in Milan.
• venue of the conference really sucks. I know that I’m more or less alone in this opinion :-)